Modern in Magnolia: A remodel opened views of mountains and sound, past and future
And his wife, Cheryl, doesn't complain that she sacrificed the traditional cut-glass chandelier she wanted in favor of a contemporary one. Not when the modern fixture's soft glow enhances a view that wraps around Puget Sound from Mount Rainier to the Olympic Mountains.
And the Gossman children are certainly not protesting the toy-strewn basement playroom. Not when it's big enough for them to have a tricycle race if they want.
The Gossmans' house — a blend of drop-dead view, eclectic style and kid-loving space — is one of six homes that will be open to the public Saturday, Dec. 7, for the Magnolia Holiday Tour of Homes.
Business brought the Gossmans from Virginia to Seattle and the Magnolia neighborhood in 1998. Cheryl had grown up back East, thinking of "home" as a two-story Colonial with an old-world look and plenty of formal spaces to entertain.
The house they found here — a one-story rambler on the bluff overlooking the Sound — could better be described as " '50s-style Seattle," long on view but woefully short on formal style.
"When we first moved here, I had to get over the shock that no one had air-conditioning," Cheryl says. "And then everything we looked at had three bedrooms but no study. When I was growing up, there were always formal dining rooms and studies off the entry. It was just a certain look I was used to, and I didn't see it here."
They hired an architect to draw up a basic floor plan, keeping the daylight basement and some of the outer walls, but adding studies for Bill and Cheryl as well as an impressive entry.
Bill, a partner with Mohr, Davidow Ventures, a venture-capital fund, eventually took over the planning and the couple brought in a designer, Andrea Piacentini, to help coordinate Cheryl's bent for Virginia tradition with Seattle's more informal style.
Piacentini started at the entry, with a grand two-story foyer that both dwarfs visitors and welcomes them in from an Italianate tiled courtyard. For the foyer, Piacentini and Cheryl Gossman chose large tiles in pale earth tones set off by cast-metal medallions in a starburst pattern made by Ann Sacks. The foyer is dressed in a damask-patterned wallpaper that has "a heavy hand, like a brown grocery bag," Piacentini says. "It really marries the traditional with the contemporary."
Because that stunning view to the great outdoors should be accessible from every angle, the Gossmans kept the main floor open. Most of the walls are banks of windows framed in warm wood. Interior walls in the living and dining rooms accommodate a marble-topped fireplace with white stone pedestal supports and a large glass-front china cabinet the Gossmans brought from Virginia.
Piacentini used optical illusion to separate those formal entertaining spaces from adjacent family areas. Rich Brazilian cherry flooring in the living and dining rooms flows into a sunny oak for the family breakfast nook and kitchen. A strip of parquet checkerboard combining the red cherry and golden oak separates the rooms.
Stressed tiles with an orchard and bird motif, also from Ann Sacks, provide a traditional accent and lend character to the kitchen, Piacentini says.
The project was in many ways a moving target from beginning to end. For one thing, the Gossmans, who moved to Seattle with one child, had two more before the house was ready to move into last spring. So the daylight-basement playroom took on ever-greater importance in their plans.
A huge TV dominates one end of the room; a fireplace snuggles into the other. Piacentini stripped the original marble from the fireplace and replaced it with irregular, iridescent glass tiles in the colors of the sea.
"That fireplace was the biggest stretch of all for me," says Cheryl, because the uneven tiles form an asymmetrical pattern. "It isn't linear, and I couldn't imagine it at first. But I really love it now."
The needs of the children came to the fore in a more appreciable way when, in the midst of the remodel, a vacant lot next door suddenly came on the market.
The Gossmans had thought the lot would be built on someday. So their plans included a closet in the master bedroom to blot out what they assumed would be a view of someone else's bedroom.
But when the for-sale sign went up they decided to buy the lot and turn it into a play court. The closet was shifted to another wall space and . . . Voila! A window-framed view of Mount Rainier!
Bill says he's kind of glad the lot wasn't available when they started. "If it had been, I might have been tempted to build a bigger house."
Now that the project is finished, Gossman says, it was something he really enjoyed doing. "Who knows? Don't tell my wife, but I might take on another remodel one of these days."
Homes for the holidays
The Gossman house is one of six homes that will be decorated for the holidays and open to the public on the Magnolia Holiday Tour of Homes from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Dec. 7.
Proceeds go to the Association for Catholic Childhood, a volunteer organization that raises funds for social-service agencies aiding children and families in Western Washington.
For advance tickets at $20, send a check and stamped, self-addressed envelope to ACC, 2140 34th Ave. W., Seattle, 98199 by Nov. 30 or visit Around the Block Gifts and Interiors, 3308 W. McGraw St. before the day of the tour. Tickets are available for $25 the day of the tour at Our Lady of Fatima Parish Social Center, 3218 W. Barrett St. The center will have a boutique featuring Christmas crafts and gifts during the tour.
Sally Macdonald is a retired Seattle Times reporter.